Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Mommy award

As I lay awake in L.H.'s bed last night, trying to convince her that she really did want to sleep there and not in my bed, I was thinking: all mommies should get an award and reward at the end of each day. I know, I know, the wonderfulness that is children is our reward. But seriously, we work hard.

It doesn't matter whether you stay home with the kids or work outside of the home; whether you have one kids or many; whether you are a single parent or you have a partner. It also doesn't matter if it was a day where you had to spend the entire time with your cranky little one or a day when you played with the babe, cleaned the bathrooms, did three loads of laundry, cooked healthy food for the family, cleaned the kitchen, changed two poopy diapers, and fished five toys out of the toilet. Both of those days are equally challenging and exhausting in their own way.

I recently saw an article that went through what a typical stay-at-home mom does every week and tallied up how much money she would make for each of the marketable skills she does (kissing away boo-boos isn't on the list, unfortunately). You know what the total was? Nearly $100,000. Man, do you know how many years it will take me to earn that much at my current job?

A friend of mine several months ago told me that I don't know anything about working and having a babe and that I've never had a 'real' job so how can I know how it is? Sorry to break it to you, dear friend, but I have had many different jobs since the age of 15. I don't know what you count as a 'real' job, but just because my job is at home instead of in an office doesn't mean that it's not real. In order to do my job, I sacrifice all the personal time I would otherwise get (as well as a clean house). Baby's asleep? Want to take a shower? Nope, you've got to go work. Why waste precious time when you so desperately need the income?

Unfortunately, real life doesn't just hand out awards like that. Out of the millions and millions of hardworking mothers in this world, how many of them actually get mommy awards on a regular basis? And why, oh why did I move to a country that doesn't celebrate Mother's Day?